Today many countries select satellite for their rural connectivity needs, and for good reason. Satellite brings reliable connectivity with widespread availability, high performance, and lower cost.

Sivakumar Sandrasegaram, left, and Alvaro Sanchez

For rural communities, connectivity is essential to allow the same opportunities as is available those in urban communities, whether participating in online learning or searching for a new job, to name just a couple of examples.

Connectivity can help lead to a better overall quality of life, as well as allowing families to connect across the miles, to stay current with news and weather alerts and to enjoy more entertainment variety.

As the second largest telecommunications company in Australia, Optus has a mission to connect the unconnected and to enable rural communities access to communications via satellite, with the most reliable availability and fair cost.

Recently, Optus was contracted to supply capacity to one of Integrasys’ wholesale channel partners to enable autonomous migration and rollout of 2,100 sites in rural communities scattered across New Zealand. With the support of iDirect technology, Satmotion Pocket, and Integrasys, all provided the wholesaler the ability to seamlessly and successfully accomplish this task in a short timeframe. In an area as large and diverse as New Zealand, streamlining the deployment of the remotes, from the initial antenna pointing to calibration and commissioning of remotes, is critical. Satmotion made it possible for VSAT installers to autonomously get remotes into the network quickly and cost effectively.

Leveraging the intuitive Satmotion interface on any Android or iOS device, bandwidth efficiency is maximized by minimizing any adjacent satellite interference for optimal performance. The VNO customer, or installer, can manage the rollout and site commissioning using this system without any requirement for manual commissioning support from the NOC who do not have access to the Teleport RF measurement system.

VT iDirect is one of the global leaders in offering VSAT connectivity throughout the most remote corners of the world. Whether voice, video, VoIP, or Internet, the VT iDirect platform offers fast, reliable satellite connectivity that is both scalable and cost effective for its partners. VT iDirect also offers several business models that partners can access, including Virtual Network Operator (VNO), which Optus took advantage of in this instance to better serve their customers.

John Arnold, Regional Vice President, APAC, VT iDirect, said, “We are proud to support Optus and its endeavors in offering VNO services throughout the remote regions of New Zealand. Optus is a longtime partner of iDirect and we have always worked together to enable high quality VSAT services to customers no matter where they are. With the help of Integrasys and their Satmotion Pocket product, which makes VSAT installation even easier, we’re pleased to see satellite connectivity already helping Optus’ end customers.”

The vast territories and mountainous areas of New Zealand.

Training and Support are Key

A good training process prior to the rollout of a project as large as this one is essential.

One of the key advantages of Satmotion is that there are no extensive training requirements. In fact, Integrasys centralizes the training through the Global VSAT Forum with an interactive training in the browser (GVF514) that can be used anytime, anywhere.

An Optus installation underway.

Integrasys also provided prompt assistance from the commissioning of the system to support throughout the initial rollout phases.

Beyond supporting the connectivity, another essential is to seamlessly support numerous VNOs with multiple customers. Satmotion, through their latest enhancement, is able to support VLANs for multiple VNOs’ customer requirements.

Juan Martinez, Technical Director at Integrasys, added, “At Integrasys we are very proud of supporting our customers in their needs as well as enhancing our products for better usability and streamlining processes even more. We focus on important time and resources from very highly skilled personnel for customer support.”

Today, thanks to great teamwork, more than 2,100 rural customers from Stewart Island to Cape Reinga in New Zealand can enjoy all of the benefits of connectivity with the rest of the world via satellite.

An Optus dish.

Local businesses can now sell their goods to anyone in the world via eBay, thanks to their newfound satellite connectivity. Whether boosting business or enabling greater opportunities for learning, satellite opens a whole new world of potential for people in the furthest corners of the globe.